


What the Fuck's a Brokeback Mountain?

by leeoliver



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, My First Fanfic, Original Character(s), Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 07:24:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11308548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeoliver/pseuds/leeoliver
Summary: short, simple ficlet about a future courier coming out to his best friend





	What the Fuck's a Brokeback Mountain?

“Huh.”  
This was about what Mal would have been expecting, maybe, if he’d delivered the news while Tex was reading, or eating, or jacking off. But cross-legged on the floor, nothing to focus on but him—a “huh” was ludicrous. Mal deserved two syllables, at least.  
“That’s it?”  
“I dunno,” shrugged Tex. “Guess we gotta break up.”  
“Pardon?”  
Tex stared at him blankly, then swallowed his gum.  
“I mean…right? I like girls.”  
“You like me.”  
“Hey, sure, but…you’re a guy.”  
Mal pursed his lips.  
“Thank you.”  
Tex shrugged, gave a smile.  
“I mean, that’s what you just said, right?”  
“Right.”

“Am I the only one who knows?”  
Aristotle Ang was letting them squat in one of his empty rooms. Soon as a paying customer comes through, though, he’d warned, them kids were getting the boot. Mal wasn’t worried. Redding hadn’t seen any sort of paying customer in a decade. Tex wasn’t worried, either, but he didn’t worry about anything.  
“Naw. Told Gu-Poh last time we were there.”  
“In what, Cantonese?”  
“I mimed it out.”  
Tex blinked a few times. Then laughed so loud Aristotle sent Alois to tell them to can it.

“So your ma don’t, then? About…”  
There had been a paying customer, it turned out. Bearded man, passing through from Whiskeytown. They were in Tex’s room. Mrs. Yamaguchi wasn’t home from work.  
“Might. But I ain’t told her.”  
Tex was laying flat on his bed, scraping a nail against the crack in the wall.  
“Well, if things run south when you do, you can always come live with us. Live next door, but it’s better than nothing.”  
Mal whistled.  
“Sure is.”

“I’ve got another question ‘bout,” Tex said one time. They were laying on his carpet.  
“Don’t mean I got an answer.”  
Tex looked up from his magazine, expression nearly hurt.  
“Hey, now, all I was saying was—”  
Mal grabbed a crumpled piece of brown paper off the living room floor, a flattened bag that liquor’d once been held in. His aim was off, and he watched it fly inches over Tex’s side, hit the wall, and fall down behind him.  
“All you is saying, Harada, is getting on my nerves.”  
Tex pulled up his magazine so it hid his face. A woman in a bikini beamed at Mal from the cover.  
“My bad,” he intoned.  
Mal laid his head back on the ground. A wad of paper pegged his back.  
Tex lowered his magazine enough to showcase a crooked smile.

“Hey, Malcolm,” Tex whispered. They were camping just a few minutes’ hike out of town, with the term “camping” used loosely. Tex’d wanted to get out of the house, and he’d dragged Mal along for the ride. The two boys shared a makeshift bed—Tex’s duffel bag was the pillow, and Mal’s poncho the blanket. The ground was warm, even at night.  
“Hey, Texas. Why so formal?”  
Tex shifted, moving closer to Mal.  
“Checking how it tastes.”  
“The name?”  
Tex moved his arm over Mal. Mal leaned back into him.  
“Yeah,” Tex said, “the name.”

Things were strange after that. Mal thought maybe Tex had told his mom. She gave them a look whenever they went into Tex’s room together. After a while, Mal decided he’d rather not give her anything to look at at all.  
“I feel bad about it. And then I feel bad about feeling bad,” Tex said once. Even after the Whiskeytown man left, Aristotle’d held onto the room. It took ten caps to Alois for them to squat in it again. Mal felt Aristotle’s eyes on him every time he came in. He felt eyes on him everywhere he went, nowadays.  
“I still like you,” Tex confessed, staring at his feet, “you gotta know that.”  
“I do.”  
“’Cept I like girls. And I feel I’m saying you’re a girl, if I keep liking you. And I know you ain’t. And I’ve tried to stop. Am tryin’. But I can’t and I don’t know what to do.”  
Mal stepped closer to him.  
“You don’t gotta stop liking girls to like me, too, Tex.”  
The shake of Tex’s head was small but firm.  
“You know I ain’t like that. You know I ain’t like you.”  
“I don’t,” Mal said. “And you don’t, either.”  
“I ain’t coming by here no more, Mal,” he said after a pause.  
“I don’t blame you.”

The decision to leave came slow, and it came in the fall. It was an open secret, now, talked about in the same breath as Mr. Deng’s extramarital affair and the Kui family’s new wallpaper. The Wu girl, no, the younger one, was asking to be called by her father’s name.  
We all cope, they said, we all cope somehow.  
His mother didn’t have time to devote to caring one way or the other. She rose before him, worked until seven, screamed at Chantal and at the photos on the walls and at anyone who would listen, then left. And Chantal would call him however he wished so long as he ate enough dinner.  
It was Tex who caught him, just before he left. Something in his eyes the day before had betrayed him, or the bag of belongings on his back made his footsteps down the dirt road increased volume a slight. Or maybe, and it was Mal’s favorite maybe, he’d just known.  
He was almost to their campsite when Mal realized he was being followed. Tex’s voice was hoarse. He sounded sick.  
“I don’t want to stop you.”  
Mal’s boots ached to go onwards, but he stopped.  
“What do you want to do?”  
“Can we sit?” was the reply.  
He was cross-legged, both of them were. The ground wasn’t warm anymore.  
Tex’s voice wasn’t hoarse because he was sick. It was hoarse because he was crying.  
“You can leave,” he said, “you can leave if that’s what you want, but not like this. You owe us more than that.”  
Mal snorted.  
“Every person in that town hates me, and half of them pretend to have forgotten why. I don’t owe them anything.”  
“Not all of us,” Tex breathed. He was close. “Not all of us hate you.”  
Tex’s lips against Mal’s were salty; his hands against Mal’s face were rough. Their foreheads stayed touching afterwards.  
“Don’t look back for me, Mal,” Tex said as he pulled away.  
Mal didn’t.


End file.
